The European Commission called on Google and Meta to promote materials from independent media from Belarus

The European Commission has called on Google, Meta and other major technology companies to help independent media in Belarus by promoting their material higher in news feeds and aggregators than the publications of pro-government publications. The Financial Times writes about this.

Corrections. Initially, the headline and text of the news stated that the European Commission also called on Google and Meta to promote materials from Russian independent media in news feeds and aggregators. This is not true - this conclusion cannot be drawn from the Financial Times article. The editors apologize to the readers.

As the newspaper reports, Belarusian journalists who left the country because of criticism of the regime of Alexander Lukashenko contacted the European Commission. They said their posts were not reaching audiences due to the algorithms of big tech companies.

According to journalists, the algorithms mistakenly take into account the censorship restrictions of the Belarusian authorities, and also do not index materials in the Belarusian language and do not limit the propaganda of the Lukashenko regime.

“Combating disinformation and promoting media freedom are two sides of the same coin. And we want large technology companies to do both the first and the second,” Vera Jourova, Deputy President of the European Commission, told The Financial Times. According to her, this means the visibility of reliable information on the Internet, and not the propaganda of Minsk and the Kremlin.

According to The Financial Times, Jourova held several meetings with Google representatives on this issue. Thus, in May 2023, she discussed with Google Director Sundar Pichai the inability of Russian independent media to monetize videos published on YouTube.

Google told the newspaper that it "makes every effort to create and enforce our policies in a way that does not take political views into account." Meta did not comment on the European Commission's calls.

Lithuanian MEP Juozas Olekas, who oversees EU relations with Belarus, told The Financial Times that big tech companies have so far “showed no desire or interest in solving the problem.” According to him, materials from media outlets blocked in Belarus are considered by Google algorithms as broken links” and are demoted in search results.